Genbox News   

Genbox News (5 April 2006)

Genbox News is a free periodic newsletter with product announcements, program tips, and other news of interest to users of Genbox Family History.

In this issue:

_________________________________________________________________

Version 3.6.4 Released

Genbox Family History Version 3.6.4 was released April 5, 2006. This free update contains a few enhancements and a number of corrections. Translations have been added for three more languages: French, French (Canada), and Slovak. Translations have been updated for Danish, German, Polish, Dutch (Netherlands), and Slovenian. To update your copy to the latest version, visit http://www.genbox.com/download.htm.

_________________________________________________________________

Additional Languages Pack Available

In addition to the 10 languages included in the standard distribution, translations are underway on 16 other languages.  In response to interest for some of these translations, a free language pack containing all the available languages, in various stages of completion, is now available for download. These vary from 5% to 69% complete. Once a language translations reaches 95% complete, it will be included in the standard distribution.

_________________________________________________________________

Tutorial: Marking All Individuals in One Branch of your Tree

As your recorded family tree grows larger, you may occasionally want to focus on a particular branch of your tree. Just your mother's side of the family, for example. To help you focus, you may wish to mark the individuals in that branch in some way, so that it will be easier to identify them as you move around in the database. Or, you may want to select just those individuals for output to charts or reports. While this is easy to do on charts and the ancestor and descendant reports by selecting the proper key individual, what about on the individual custom reports? Suppose you are having a family reunion for one side of the family, and want to send letters to only that branch? Or maybe you want a list of their names, with ages and places of birth? 

Let's begin by taking a look at how individuals can be selected for reports, on the Report Options Key Page. First, you can always type in the name or ID of desired individuals into the list. Next, you can use the "Select..." button to open the Individuals Pick Dialog, where you can select a single individual or "Select All" for a group of individuals. The dialog lets you filter by name, birth and death dates, gender and by individual flags. Third, you can click the "Select List..." button and choose an existing list of individuals. Fourth, you can click the "Select Query..." button and choose a saved query definition file.

These choices suggest three possibilities for marking and/or selecting all individuals on one branch of your family tree: create a custom flag to mark them; create a new individual list; or define a query.

The query has the advantage that it runs each time it is used, so it will always be up to date. But a query can not be used to mark individuals in your database, at least not directly. Since you would also use the query results to create a list or initialize a custom flag, start by defining a query for the branch you are interested in: from the Tools menu, select Search. On the Identifiers page, enter the name of the key ancestor for the branch (or key descendant). Click the Match tab. Enter the match condition "Individual 2 is an Ancestor of Individual 1". Click "Return results for Individual 2". Click "Search", and you should see the "Query Results" list with the right set of individuals. At this point, you could save the query as "My Branch" so you could use it again later.

Once you have the "Query Results" list, you can use it directly to select the individuals for a custom individuals report. It works just like any other list. But because this list gets overwritten each time a query is performed, save a copy of it under a different name: click "Query Results" to highlight it. Press CTRL+C to copy it, then CTRL+V to paste it as a new list. When prompted, enter a new name, such as "Mother's Branch". Now you have a permanent list of the individuals in your branch that can be selected for the keys to your custom individuals report.

But how do you mark individuals in the database so you can easily identify them? There are two ways. The obvious way is to copy your "Mother's Branch" list to the Individuals Marks List: on the Lists View, simply drag your list and drop it on top of "Marks - Individuals". Keep the default "replace existing list". Now, all the names of individuals in your branch will be highlighted in bold, red letters! (You can change the font in Preferences.) The less obvious way is to create a custom individual flag. Then you can see who is in the branch and who is not by viewing this flag on the Attributes page. First: open the Data Setup View. On the Individuals Flags page, create a new flag named "Focus Branch". Then on the Lists View, drag your "Mother's Branch" list and drop it on your new flag "Focus Branch". That will initialize it. Your custom flag can also be used on the Individuals Pick Dialog. When you move on to another branch, just drop your new Query Results on your "Focus Branch" flag to update.  <>

_________________________________________________________________

Helpful Links

Purchase Genbox:
http://www.genbox.com/register.htm

Download Current Version (3.6.4):
http://www.genbox.com/download.htm

Thoughtful Creations Message Forums:
http://www.thoughtfulcreations.com/forum

Subscribe to GENBOX-L@Rootsweb.com Mailing List:
email to GENBOX-L-request@rootsweb.com with "subscribe" as subject 

Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.genbox.com/faq


© Copyright 2006  Thoughtful Creations. All rights reserved. Last Updated 04/05/2006.